The U.S. sanctions on Sudan will harm Sudan's peace process as well as the people in Darfur, Sudanese Foreign Minister Lam Akol said Wednesday at a video conference broadcast from Khartoum at Washington's National Press Club.

"The imposition of sanctions is definitely going to harm the peace process as well as harming the Darfur people," Akol said.

U.S. President George W. Bush tightened sanctions on Sudan last month and pushed for a new, tougher UN Security Council resolution to impose sanctions on Sudan for the violence in the Darfur region.

"The first casualty of these sanctions, coming at the time that they did, is the peace process," Akol said. He added that the sanctions are scuttling efforts "that are meant to bring about the peaceful resolution of the problem in Darfur."

"Definitely everybody is perplexed and surprised as to why such a decision would come at this particular time when we are about to finalize what was asked of all of us to do," Akol said.

The United States imposed new sanctions on Sudan last May in response to the violence in Darfur. Sudan has rejected the U.S. sanctions.

Khartoum was under mounting pressures to approve the deployment of UN peacekeepers in Darfur, although it has accepted the first two phases of a UN peacekeeping plan for Darfur but stalled the third phase to create a much larger UN-AU hybrid force.

Many civilians in Darfur, in western Sudan, have been displaced and a number of civilians have been killed since tribal clashes and anti-government rebellion erupted in February 2003 in the country.

Source: Xinhua